December 6th 2006

December 6th 2006.

The sun was shining when I woke up, 16 degrees, a temperature in most years saved for early fall and spring. It was Wednesday and I had the day off and the the weather was good, so I decided to make the best of it. Three years ago when my brother and I came through Prague, we saw a lot--Prague Castle, the Mucha Museum, and a lot of bars--but we didn't have time to see the Old Jewish Cemetery, a hill with scores of 600-year-old sarcophagi and tombstones, tilting and leaning in the earth, like a thick forest, dead leaves and long uncut grass covering the hill and the base of the headstones where no grounds keeper could fit a mower.

First I had to meet with an American girl I co-teach a class with. We discuss the progress of our class every week, or the lack there of.

The cemetery is located in Josefov, the center of Prague's Jewish community, along with the Jewish Museum, which includes the Maisel Synagogue, the Spanish Synagogue, the Pinkas Synagogue, the Klausen Synagogue, the Ceremonial Hall, the Old-New Synagogue, and the Robert Guttman Gallery. It was easy enough to find, only three stops from Namesti Miru, the closest one to my flat, to Staromestka, the nearest to the Museum, by the River Vltava and Rudolfinum Auditorium.

Before entering, a global, boat-like structure, on the river-side of the Museum, caught my attention. To those unfamiliar with Genesis, it probably didn't look like much, but I could tell it was the Ark. And now I forget the exact symbolism and the name of the artist who created it. It had to do with the collection of important creations, as the Ark did with animals, but here it was heritage and artifacts and memory. It was made of a translucent plastic, so that at night a projection of Jewish history is played from the inside and the bow of the Ark acts as a screen.

The first synagogue I entered was Pinkas, built in 1535. The building has two small rooms adjacent to one large room, with an altar at the far end. On each side of the altar, listed vertically, read the names of concentration camps: Terezin, Dechau, Hamburg, Oswiecim. On the walls are inscribed the names of the Jewish victims of Bohemia and Moravia, their personal data, and the names of the communites to which they belonged. Tens of thousands of names. Huskova, Gerda. Hatschek, Bedrich. Haubenova, Eleonora. No pictures were allowed. Its form is similar to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C. The feeling was like in the Holocaust Museum in Berlin, designed by the famous architect Daniel Libeskind, where the floors have an unlevel grade and you always feel off-balance. But the atmosphere (visually) isn't as dark or as heavy as the Vietnam Memorial, or as disconcerting as the Holocaust Museum. The walls are white; the lettering black, and the dates red. A lot of light pours in through the long-slit windows. It is, after all, a synagogue, a Greek word meaning "assembly," for worship and study, and not exclusively a sorrowful place. Upstairs, the exhibition "Children's Drawings from Terezin 1942-1944" were drawn by some of the 10,000 children under the age of 15 who were deported to Terezin. The drawings are simple and telling.

Out the back of the Synagogue is a courtyard, which opens to the Old Jewish Cemetery. You can glimpse the cemetery through the iron gate # in the courtyard. There's not much to tell about the cemetery you won't see in the pictures. A guide would have been helpful. Along with the tombstones, I had expected to see old, grit-covered, tilted crosses; a very obtuse presupposition to make, and a very Christian one, too. The hill isn't actually a hill, I learned, but due to the shortage of space, layers of bodies, six to twelve deep. They're all dust by now, the youngest of the burials having been in the 18th century.

Once I finished winding through the cemetery, I came out a gate, at the right of which is Klausen Synagogue, a museum of sorts, displaying artifacts of Jewish custom and ceremony. The ceilings are very high, and four chandeliers run down the center. In wooden display cases, with large glass fronts, are many religious and ceremonial items: Hanukkah lamps; Scroll of Esther (Magillat Ester); Scrolls of Torah; Embroideries, "At the Western Wall" and "By the River of Babylon"; 17th Century Torah pointer, gilt silver, with a pointing index-finger at end, twisted stem, a small dragon atop, wings spread; Passover glass, coated two-thirds in ruby, so it looked as if it were partially full of wine. I read a plaque of Tishah Be-Av, among the days of sorrow, recalling the destruction of the 1st and 2nd Temples of Jerusalem.

It was still light when I finished and I didn't feel like going home. Old Town Square was only a short walk away, along with the book store my flatmate works at. I headed that way, and once I was in the Square I took advantage of the light and snapped a lot of photos. A Christmas tree had been put up in the center of the Square since the last time I walked through, and rows and rows of Christmas shops filled the usually void expanse of the cobblestone Square. A lot of Holiday food and candy. I was really hungry by then, so I strolled from shop to shop, evaluating my options. Roasted almonds, cashews, peanuts, sunflower seeds, and other nuts smelled especially inviting. I got an assortment of all, in an ice-cone package, and ate those as I walked. I took a picture of the Astronomical Clock, of Church of Our Lady Before Tyn (construction started in 1380, last tower erected in 1835), and of a wooden manger. Then I went down the alley way that leads to the bookstore.
I am uncertain of the name of this white church, but I think its architecture is baroque. The large statue in front of it is the center piece of Old Town Square. And you can see the little shops and a roaster, smoke rolling off. Too bad I couldn't upload the sweet smells.

I've read five 400+ page books in the past three months. With TV programs either in Czech or Russian, you soon get bored, even of sports. At the bookstore, I got a new copy of Walden, paper-back, shiny cover, excellent print, large letters. My flatmate punched out about the time I arrived, so we went to a pub around the corner. We ordered two dark beers, Bernard, my favorite. (A friend had text me earlier, asking if I'd join her and some others at U Sudu, a cavernous pub, a labyrinth really, where stairs lead down and up, passageways this way and that. You're lost as soon as you enter). We paid our bill and headed for U Sudu.

It took us awhile to find the place (last time I was there, it was dark, and I know my way around but Prague's a maze of alley ways in which a compass is pointless). Our party was in a room down stairs. Lenka, who we were meeting, had brought me a dinner the week before, cooked by her mom, and cake, too! She asked me how it was and I said delicious. The conversation jumped around and came back to the dinner. I thought it was chicken but it wasn't, as I learned from a complicated and intense bit of interrogation. I kept asking her if it wasn't chicken then what was it. She didn't know the word in English. I was intent on finding out what I had eaten two large helpings of. She tried telling me it was parakeet. I could only think of the scene in Dumb and Dumber. "Pretty bird, pretty bird." Turned out, and I still can't believe this, that it was pigeon!! My flatmate had told me of an underground film, where a few guys are throwing bread crumbs laced with poison to pigeons, and then they say, as the pigeons begin to drop and plop on the ground, "f----- flying rats." That scene was in my mind as well. Nonetheless, the bird was good.

We left awhile later, hopped a tram to our neighborhood, and went to a Mexican/Italian restaurant. I had Mexican, more Czexican than the authentic. But it was filling, whatever it may have been filled with. And then I went home around 10pm, exhausted, and slept.